


dog years (and other units of measurement)

by maggierachael



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: (and probably karen's too let's be honest with ourselves), F/M, Fluff, because her dumb lizard brain decided to latch on and not let go until she finished it, did i get their voices right at all? probably not, do i care? yes but not enough not to post this, frank castle being good with animals is my kryptonite y'all, gotta love the good 'basic plot point that's really just the impetus for ~feelings~, in which mags writes the millionth version of a trope the fandom already loves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:07:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24407779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maggierachael/pseuds/maggierachael
Summary: The dog shows up on Karen’s doorstep on a Saturday afternoon.
Relationships: Frank Castle/Karen Page
Comments: 5
Kudos: 71





	dog years (and other units of measurement)

**Author's Note:**

> I just can't deal with this,  
> But I'm still afraid to be there  
> among your hounds of love  
> And feel your arms surround me.  
> I've always been a coward  
> And never know what's good for me...
> 
> -"Hounds of Love", Kate Bush

The dog shows up on Karen’s doorstep on a Saturday afternoon. 

She’s invested in a story when it arrives, elbows so deep in the sludge of years old case reports that she doesn’t even hear the doorbell. Well, she does, but it’s an afterthought. A fly in the ointment. An annoying intrusion on her otherwise immaculate focus. 

Some would call that kind of work dedication. Foggy called it hyperfixation. 

Either way, she didn’t notice the bell until it had almost faded away, an echoing hum easily mistaken for tinnitus or the music of some kids on the street corner below. It’s difficult to miss a doorbell in an apartment that’s basically one room with a walled-off sink, but difficult never went up against Karen Page with her nose in an autopsy report. 

_ I’ll get it in a minute _ , she thought.  _ If they’re really that interested, they’ll wait. _

Exactly three people had the excuse to be showing up at her door on a Saturday - Jehovah’s Witnesses didn’t tend to frequent Brooklyn - and if it was any of those three, they could wait for her to dig herself out of the mess she’d made. God knows she’d done it for them.

God knows she’d do it again. 

Whoever’s at the door is insistent, and the bell rings again before Karen can finish scribbling down some note about an inconsistency in the reports. If it’s Matt, she’s going to kick his ass, eeri inhuman reflexes or not. He couldn’t seem to get it through his head that she didn’t work for him anymore, let alone that it took most normal people more than five seconds to answer the door. 

The note she’s writing ends in undecipherable scribbles, and before the ringer could have another go, she shifts the papers on her lap to her desk and slips her laptop shut, a portal to a much darker, nastier world snapped closed like a stubborn closet door. 

If only it was as easy to cut herself off from that world. 

She escapes from her mountain of paperwork just as she expects another insistent ring, but it never comes. The ghosts of the last two merely haunt her as she yanks on a hoodie, covering the fact that she’d very clearly spent the whole day in pajamas as she moved to answer the door. (Not that that would hide her Tweety Bird flannel bottoms, but it was short notice.) The eerie silence is almost unsettling, an omen she knows all too well as her peephole reveals nothing but the stark white hallway beyond. None of the three expected men stand in front of her door, posed awkwardly in wait - not even some wayward former client looking for someplace safe to go. (The fact that that wasn’t out of the realm of imagination was something she’d worry about later.) 

Her hand itches for the Ruger in the desk drawer, but it’s much too late for that now. Her hand is already curled around the door handle, her curiosity out for a joyride as it slips itself out the door and into whatever mess the world had chosen to leave at her doorstep this time. 

As it turns out, she’d opened the door to worse things than a pitbull, sleek and brown and wagging every part of its body that wasn’t directly leashed to the hall radiator. 

It couldn’t have been more than a year or two old, but it could knock her clean off her feet if it wanted to. Strong, clearly purebred, probably from one of those insane, barely legal sellers that charged fifteen hundred bucks a head. It looked like it had been through a few scrapes, but it couldn’t have been too poorly off, considering the way at which it sprung to life the instant Karen stepped into the hall. 

She’s lucky her building’s quiet, and that most of the families on her floor are out entertaining their kids - no need for the Codispoti twins to come out and question why Miss Page tied her dog to the radiator that makes nasty noises in the winter. Wherever it came from, the pitbull isn’t exactly keen on keeping a low profile, and processing the fact that someone had dropped it off at her door is more than enough to distract Karen from quieting it down. 

So distracted, in fact, that she very nearly misses the scrap of white paper folded around its black leather collar - lost in the haze of confusion and too much adrenaline from that morning’s coffee. 

It’s only when the dog lifts its head to bark that Karen sees it - a tiny piece of white that she scrambles to grab as she tries to ply the animal into silence. It’s frayed around the edges, obviously torn from something much larger, and her hands are shaking as she unfolds it. Whether it was from her coffee or from fear, she’d never know, but it didn’t help her reaction to the words placed in front of her face at 3:30PM on a Saturday before a deadline.

_ Nabbed her off some Gnucci punk. Think you could watch her for a few days? -Frank _

Her complete lack of surprise at the note’s author probably should’ve been more cause for concern, but that was something to be confronted at a later date. 

T he dog almost seemed to notice her lack of surprise, tilting its head in an amusing imitation of Karen’s own reaction. Whether she’d been around him for a while or not, she seemed to know Frank Castle as well as Karen did (animal intuition, she figured), and they both seemed to realize one thing: Emily Post he was not, but ding-dong ditching a dog at her doorstep was certainly a new one for him.

Karen took a closer look at the words he’d scribbled on the note, in some attempt to process her situation. Clean, military handwriting, even if she could tell he’d scribbled it in a rush - typical of everything she’d seen him write. Short, but to the point: “think you could watch her”. Not “think you could take her to a kennel because I, wanted fugitive Frank Castle, can’t exactly show my face in public like that?” Not even “think you could find a place for her?”

For a moment, she thought she might be reading things wrong. That he’s scribbled the fewest words possible in haste, so he could slip out the door and out of her life without leaving so much as a fingerprint behind. For an instant, she wanted to think that she was reading too far in. 

But no. Of anyone she knew, Frank was the least likely to be reckless with words. The least likely to be anything but crystal clear with his intentions. The least likely to lead her on. 

Which meant, if she jumped to the most direct conclusion, that Frank Castle had kidnapped a dog from a mob family with the intention of keeping it. 

She supposed she’d seen worse. 

The dog must have as well, given the way she nosed at Karen’s leg and left a trail of saliva dripping on the old, worn hallway tile. She was still a baby, too young and eager to realize what was happening to her, and Karen was the closest thing she had to a home. The closest thing she had to safety in a city where no way was too thick to be broken down, no lock too difficult to pick. It was either the apartment with its door swung wide open, or the dark, dangerous streets of even one of New York’s nicer neighborhoods. 

Karen sighed. She could hardly manage a goldfish on her own, given her work schedule - a pitbull the size of the toddler living in 4C was going to pose a moderate amount of problems. Where was she supposed to get food? How often did she need to be home to take care of her? And none of that even considered the fact that her building was strict about its “no free-roaming pets” rule. 

But then again, she was pretty sure her landlord wouldn’t be happy about The Punisher skulking around the way he did, and he’d managed to get in and out without complaint. 

“You going to keep me company until Frank gets back?”

She glanced down at the poor thing, scratching at the patch behind her ears that no dog could ever quite reach. She seemed relatively harmless, based on the way she thumped her foot against the ground and panted happily. Karen would certainly have to do something about the slobbering, but for having come from the Gnuccis, she didn’t seem ready to tear anyone’s throat out. In fact, the look on her face almost screamed,  _ Yes! Of course! I’ll be the best company! _

“Great.” 

Karen smiled as if talking to an actual human, and leaned over to unleash her temporary ward from the shackles of the radiator. There would be challenges, but nothing she hadn’t faced before. 

“I could use somebody to proofread what I’m working on anyway.”

_________

Wherever she’d come from, and whatever she’d seen, Karen decided that her new furry roommate must’ve made a terrible mob dog. 

She was fairly certain that no self-respecting crime lord would ever want a dog whose main objective in life was to convince every human in their surrounding radius to play with them in order to bestow copious amounts of slobber and kisses. Frank had managed to find the one mob dog in all of New York who wasn’t the least bit vicious, but instead was extremely invested in snuggling with the closest human at every given opportunity. 

Given that said human was usually Karen (and on one occasion, Foggy, who had the good sense not to ask where she’d come from), the puppy turned out to be a useful addition to the odd schedule that made up her daily life. Aside from one rather unfortunate incident with her water bowl, it was comforting, having sixty pounds of muscle and fur at her feet while she worked. A dog was a moderately less annoying office companion than Matt and Foggy, and she felt somehow safer walking New York’s streets at night, even though the thing couldn’t hurt a fly if she wanted to. Like she could take her out and not immediately have to conjure fifteen new and insulting responses to being catcalled. 

(A part of her wondered if Frank had known that would happen when he dropped her off. Another part of her crushed that thought before it could linger too long.) 

She didn’t understand the word no, and she had a certain affinity for her foster mother’s favorite spot on the couch, but the dog filled the side of the bed that a regrettable part of Karen had wished weren’t so empty, and by the time two weeks had passed and she hadn’t heard so much as a word from Frank, she was considering going to the pound and filling out adoption papers herself. 

But Frank’s timing had, historically, always been impeccable. 

“Y’name her yet?”

It’s the first question out of his mouth after he arrives, unceremoniously and without comment and covered in what would be a suspicious amount of blood to anyone else but her. He’s half-limping as he tosses what used to be a decent hoodie on the coat rack by her door, and Karen hardly registers the question as he softballs it at her. Like her doorbell, it goes in one ear and out the other, an ancillary addition to a situation already consuming the entirety of her attention. Only this time, her focus was hardly on the work sitting in front of her. 

He’s growing the beard back, she notices. It looks good. 

“Mmm?”

She hasn’t seen him in almost a month, and yet she reaches for the first aid kit without a second thought. Muscle memory fuels her actions as her brain focuses on who’s standing in front of her, all broad shoulders and bloodied face in the middle of her pitifully small living room. It’s second nature at that point, despite how horrifying that is to the sensible part of her brain. Sensible was never part of the equation with Frank, but it never seemed to matter. What was sense when it came to the people you cared about?

“A name.” The words come out in a monotone as Karen begins to unpack the kit and dig for the hydrogen peroxide. “For her.”

Her being the sixty pounds of brown fur currently zooming in circles around Frank, daring him to take a step forward without tripping over her and faceplanting into the rug. She clearly hadn’t forgotten the man who’d dragged her out of Hell’s Kitchen and into a world of dog treats and long walks, and the eagerness with which she pounced on him as he kneeled to pet her almost made Karen laugh. Her front paws could extend up to his shoulders at that height, and anyone less than the certified brick shit house squatting in her front parlor would’ve been knocked flat on their ass by the corded muscles she could see flexing in excitement. 

Frank didn’t quite smile - when did he ever - but Karen could see traces of it in his face, and in the way he let the dog climb all over him despite the visible open wounds on his arms and neck. They were similar in a way, she supposed — both battered, escapees from a world they’d never intended on landing in. All faded scars and old bruises, side effects of actions they could never hope to predict, people they could never hope to influence. Victims. Refugees of another time. Another place, far away from the tiny square of linoleum and carpet that Karen called home. 

And yet somehow possessing the space in their hearts to continue to care, if only on some very base level.

The idea of dogs resembling their owners never seemed so true. 

“Oh. Yeah.”

Her hands had stilled over the kit, fingers still wrapped around a pad of gauze and some sterile wipes as she watched the eager young puppy react in much the same way she’d wanted to when Frank had arrived, much as she hesitated to admit it.Years ago, she’d’ve called it the wrong side of fight or flight, that response. That way she always found herself stilling, fading into the background to get a better look at the man in front of her. Her heart said jump, but her brain questioned how high. Asked what made this man who’d been through every level of hell and back so eager to return to her doorstep, and what small things had changed since he left. People always did that, changed before she was ready for it, and Frank was a slowly-weathered monolith, commanding all of her attention. For better or for worse. 

“I’ve been calling her Zoey.” 

It feels like a silly name now, saying it in front of Frank. The two of them were similar enough that it seemed ill-fitting, inappropriate. Yes, maybe the dog liked rolling in dirt and jumping on their couch, but they were both tough. Stubborn. Loyal. 

Frank’s name fit him. Fit the kind of stubborn man who’d stuck to her like a fever she couldn’t sweat out. Fit the fact that he always got up, no matter what knocked him down. Fit despite every newspaper and lawman in the country that was determined to turn it into some kind of curse. 

Sure, Pete was the name on the insurance and the passport and the countless amounts of forged documents, but it’d never fit. Not the way Frank did. Not the way it sounded coming out of Karen’s mouth. 

“I told my parents when I was eight that I wanted a dog named Zoey,” she said. “Said I’d save up all my allowance money to take care of it, but Dad never caved.”

It wasn’t a lie. Her tightwad father had never wanted to spare the expense for a puppy, claiming it would only go to waste once the dog grew up and nobody thought it was cute enough to take care of. Karen had pestered him for months about it, even going so far as to bring home research from the library on which breeds were most suitable for middle-class families.. She’d written down books of information, showing school binders full of papers to her parents at the dinner table when she should’ve been doing her schoolwork.

In some ways, she could credit that childhood obsession for the life she led now. 

Perhaps not the parts involving Frank Castle, but who’s to say. 

“But she’s your dog now, I guess.” Her hands finally unclenched from around the medical supplies and she shook herself free from the mental whirlpool that seemed to form every time Frank came around. “Unless you plan on taking her back to the Gnuccis any time soon?” 

Almost as soon as she’d shaken it, the whirlpool was back and she wanted to smack herself. She regretted the joke almost as soon as it left her mouth - typical Karen, thinking before she spoke - poking a very large, heavily armed bear covered in somebody else’s blood, like she was immune to what he could do. Like he couldn’t just as easily decide she wasn’t worth the trouble he always seemed to put himself through for her sake. Where that impulse came from, she wasn’t sure she’d ever understand, but some twisted, stubborn part of her seemed to want to stretch how far he was willing to ride it. 

Whatever trace of amusement that had settled itself on Frank’s face faded, and the expression that settled on his face was difficult to read beneath the swollen lower lip and the series of cuts that made his face look like a jigsaw puzzle. The speed at which Karen’s stomach dropped could’ve rivaled even the most intense of rollercoaster hills as Frank met her eyes and shrugged.

“I think she likes you better.”

The sheer deadpan with which he said it almost made Karen giggle with surprise. Had he actually... _ made a joke _ ?

Somehow, when she thought she’d seen everything, Frank continued to surprise her. 

“I wouldn’t know,” she muttered, trying her hardest (and failing) to conceal the shock in her voice, “Considering she doesn’t respond to commands. So I guess you could call her anything you want once you’re out of here.” 

She matched his shrug, trying to seem nonchalant about things and think nothing of how odd she felt. She willed her brain to focus on something else, something other than the fact that talking with Frank about something so mundane seemed...well, not mundane at all. But trying to make eye contact as his attention shifted fully from the dog to her didn’t make that a particularly easy goal. 

“Actually, I…”

He paused before the sentence could really begin, the rest of the sentence left hanging in the air as Zoey wondered why he’d stopped giving her attention. His expression had certainly dropped now, even behind the grime and dirt on his face, and Karen wondered what she’d said to give it cause to do so.. 

“I was thinking…” His voice had gone soft, quiet even, and Karen’s brow g=furrowed even further. “You could use somebody here. When I’m not around.” 

_ When I’m not around.  _

The implications of that phrase sent Karen’s head reeling. 

She chose to blame it on the smell of the sterile wipes. 

“When you’re not around,” she repeated. The phrase felt new, alien. Like it acknowledged something they’d both been tiptoeing around. Frank nodded. 

“Yeah.”

It seemed like such an obvious answer to him. Karen soldiered on through the tight feeling quickly constricting the center of her chest. The fact that she hadn’t bothered to help Frank clean up yet was ancillary by now. 

“That somebody being a pitbull who likes to chew on furniture legs and barks at butterflies?” 

She raised an eyebrow in jest, and the solid sternness of Frank’s face cracked just slightly.

“She does that?”

“Let’s just say that my Bulletin Christmas bonus is going to a new writing desk.”

She smirked at her own joke - she’d needed to replace that desk for years anyway - and watched as Frank furrowed his brow.

“I’ll fix it.” The response was instant, offered without thought or pretense. “Can take her for walks too. Get her out of your hair while you work.”

He glanced at Zoey, then back to her, one shoulder shrugging towards the pile of papers she’d abandoned on her desk once he’d arrived. Karen nearly protested, saying she liked having the dog around to get her out of her own head, but hesitated upon considering the scene before her. He clearly had some affinity for the puppy he’d rescued, and Zoey very clearly liked him, given the way she’d kept him glued to the ground, nosing at him to continue petting her even as his gaze locked onto Karen’s with no intention of wavering. She didn’t know much about him, much about the life he’d led before he’d landed himself in a hospital bed with a bullet in his head, but little things that like that told her all she needed to know. She wondered if he’d ever had animals with Maria, and what had compelled him to bring this one home. To bring her here. 

He could’ve easily left her with Lieberman, or Curt. Not that she’d met them, but she knew of them - knew they had more than a tiny East Side apartment for a dog to run around in. He could’ve dropped her at the pound, or at a vet’s — hell, he probably could’ve left her with Matt and she’d have found a place to go. So why her? Why the sudden impulse to give her something so important?

“Are you asking me to co-parent a dog with you, Frank?” 

The words slip out before she can really think about what she’s asking, her tone more incredulous than she would’ve liked. She didn’t  _ mean  _ to sound like she was conducting an interview, but Work Karen slipped out anyway as she watched the Punisher nuzzle a dog on the floor of her foyer. It was a question layered with plenty of others - was he implying that he wanted to stick around? Wanted something other than disappearing for weeks at a time, only ever showing up at her door when things were dire? What was the point in creating this situation for the two of them in the first place?

What did this mean for the two of them?

Karen had thoughts, things she wanted to believe were true, but she didn’t dare speak their names. She knew normalcy wasn’t...well,  _ normal  _ for Frank. She recognized that itch under his skin, the constant need to  _ do _ , to find work in the blood that would’ve left anyone else’s conscience permanently stained. She knew he’d lost normal the same way he’d lost his wife, his kids, any semblance of the life he’d worked hard to make for himself. One could argue she’d lost that way of life too — why else would she be standing here, allowing him into her life — but not in the way he had. 

She’d pulled the knife from her chest, no matter what she’d suffered in the process. Gotten the help she needed to heal the wound, no matter what that meant she’d have to leave behind. 

Frank had left the point in his heart, in some attempt to prevent losing anything else. 

But he deserved something beyond that work. He deserved something that wasn’t just a consequence of whatever had happened to him that day, that wasn’t the next step in a quest that would forever be generating new objectives. No matter what anyone else said, no matter the blood and the pain and the loss, Karen knew he hadn’t stopped to give himself that. She won’t begin to question the things she doesn’t understand, but she understands pain. She understands the need to erase, to bandage the wound with something heavy enough that the hurt can’t even compare. To deflect, to dodge, to move so much that stillness becomes the pain. She understands that. And she understands Frank, as much as she can. 

She knew she couldn’t force him to slow down, couldn’t make the decision to adapt to normalcy for him. She couldn’t force the idea of letting someone in, but she’d be damned if she wouldn’t at least encourage it.

“I--”

Frank stopped himself before the rest of the thought could form, and Karen wondered briefly if she’d jumped to a conclusion that hadn’t ever crossed his mind. This could very easily just be a friendly gesture, a gift from someone who understood how on edge she sometimes felt. She prided herself on always being a step ahead of everyone around her, but it had a tendency to bite her in the ass if it was a step in the wrong direction. 

A beat passes before Frank says anything else, and Karen feels the bite of her nails against the palms of her hand before she registers the muscles moving to do it. The impulsive part of her brain screamed to say something, to fill the silence with an apology or a purpose statement,  _ anything _ that could ward off the unnamed feeling slowly seeping into her chest. But to pressure Frank was to step on a landmine, and so she waited. Breathed. Agonized over every possible response. 

“Maybe, yeah.”

Karen never believed the age old romcom trope that someone could let out a breath they didn’t know they were holding, but in that moment, watching the tension in Frank’s shoulders dissipate as he responds, she had to concede that it was true. 

She’d conceded a lot of things for Frank Castle. And she wasn’t sure she wanted to take any of them back. 

Her hands finally found the strength to move, and she’s able to think clearly for the first time in a month as she slides down to the floor, to the odd little patchwork unit that’s fallen into her lap before she could think to say otherwise. Not exactly what she would’ve imagined, and nowhere near conventional, but ideal in its own way. 

“Good,” she murmured, scratching Zoe behind the ears. “Because she’s got your nose.”

I t’s not quite normal, but it’s close enough for them. 

**Author's Note:**

> Me, late to The Punisher game by several years and coming in with a poorly written version of a trope that already exists? Never.


End file.
